Love spy's, great for stealing technology early game from your neighbor, sadly enough, they hardly ever did anything and you could go rampart with it combined with Repulsive. Late game, switch it to sabotage and maybe luck out destroying a star fortress and have a large advantage. They're good for early game, but unless you get a racial bonus or take a hit technology wise, it's not worth it mid to late game.

Agreed. I've never been able to win through espionage on large maps, especially late game even with darloks. On small maps, stealing techs early game usually gives that much needed edge against the closest neighbors. Perhaps devs could consider expanding subterfuge plays ?

Agreed. I've never been able to win through espionage on large maps, especially late game even with darloks. On small maps, stealing techs early game usually gives that much needed edge against the closest neighbors. Perhaps devs could consider expanding subterfuge plays ?

This isn't a bad suggestion, I think it's something we could def. pass on.

Agreed. I've never been able to win through espionage on large maps, especially late game even with darloks. On small maps, stealing techs early game usually gives that much needed edge against the closest neighbors. Perhaps devs could consider expanding subterfuge plays ?

Really ? Sabotage proved VERY useful for me even on large maps. With enough spies, you destroy a building each turn (especially good when you destroy their star fortress or something similar).

Really ? Sabotage proved VERY useful for me even on large maps. With enough spies, you destroy a building each turn (especially good when you destroy their star fortress or something similar).

Not sure which version of MoO you are talking about. But in MoO1, unless the AI/opponent didn't have opposing agents of their own, the chances of pulling off successful sabotages weren't really high on Hard/Impossible difficulty settings in late game. I'd put my resources into strengthening my fleet then, since everyone else was also building theirs up. You could get away if playing Darloks but I've never been able to attribute a win by pulling off more sabotages than planetary conquests at late game...shrugs.

I think one of the few good MoO mechanics that Stardrive 2 altered was espionage. Basically allowing you use your spies for a range of different things such as finding enemy fleets and their ships compositions, finding their systems and using them as diplomatic tools.

I think thats the right line of thinking... but we should go a step further. I want to harass and hinder other empires, not just boost myself.

If i notice another player getting too big for his britches, i want to bother him, without going to war.

If i notice a powerful alliance of empires waring against a smaller one, i want to send (or rather sell! ) my spies intelligence to the weaker side and help them out as in the long run, i will be fighting them all!

I want to sabotage enemy fleets pulling them away from their destination, out into empty space. Adding a turn or two to the fleets path towards its destination.

I want to not only steal a players map info, but destroy his copy of it. So in a MP game, any space they dont have active vision over becomes greyed out fog of war again. At the very least, i want to hide my own space again!

I want my spies on an enemy ship during combat, so i can have them do covert missions, or even suicide runs.

I want to attack a fleet with my own and using my spies to misdirect a few of their ships away from the combat, especially their leader / flagship / etc.

I expect some mechanic along the lines of infiltration points where over time i gain influence unique for each faction that i can spend to do those above actions.

This limits the amount of damage and misdirection i can do without considerable effort. It also means i could save it all up and really mess with a faction in one go, allowing me to launch a covert operation against an empire.

You could even sell influence via diplomacy to other empires!

Oh the possibilities. I want so much from espionage, i think its implementation is always a side note in 4x games when it could really be a game unto itself.

It would not unbalance the game either because you can relatively ignore espionage by simply placing a lot of your own spies in defense, slowing down the rate other empires gain infiltration points against you to the extent where even after 100 turns, they cant do massive damage against you.

You and your friends may have preferred certain features from MoO1 or MoO2 .. or perhaps even MoO3 but that does not mean everyone prefers it that way.

Perhaps you could think of some amazing alternative that could enhance the game in new areas, making it more enjoyable for everyone!

Please be creative and open minded when posting, we all want this to be the best game it can be.

Just a couple of keywords here: Attention to detail. The old Master Of Orion games truly had this whereas most modern games don`t. There was actually some one presenting the new freshly stolen technology to me, as I was the mighty emperor of a galactic civilization. Nowadays most games barely manage to make a text sitrep message out of a similar event.

Edited by Mikko_M, 03 July 2015 - 12:15 AM.

Moreover, I advise that the tactical combat must be made more player controllable and informative for this to become a proper MOO game.​

​The long lost formula for space 4X game success = Good tactical combat + good empire management > than just good tactical combat or good empire management alone.

In Moo 1 spying was super effective. You could incite revolts on enemy planets, making them unusable by your rival empire. Essentially, you could bring almost all of your enemy star systems to a halt. If you incited a revolt on the last system, the leader would be ultimately deposed, and neutral relations would come into place. The only way to bring back those systems would be for the empire to send troop transports, which in Moo 1 were comprised of population units with rifles. So you where basically locking up his systems and forcing him to have his civilians fight each other if he wanted them back.

The potential for damage was huge, you could regularly send a system to revolt every 10-15 turns with enough spies.

Using spies to frame and create bad relations between races quickly became one of my favorite elements of moo. The real strength ( though it was useful and very possible with high spy bonuses ) of spies was about causing mayhem between races and washing your hands until you were caught and getting caught wasn't something that happened often if you were a good spy race. Of course spying didn't give victories but it leaded you to victory if lucky enough. The lucky traits in older versions of Moo had many small affect that could be extremely useful, such as having enemy fleets just passing by instead of striking, positive diplomacy or having more luck with not being caught for spy missions and mostly having Gnn on your side (more good things would happen to your race then bad things)

You could start a game having a 30+ bonus at spying. Since it was very useful mostly at the beginning having to explore enemy solar systems was irrelevant because of the waste of time, all you needed was to meet the race, then concentrate spies for something you really needed like techs for advancement, blowing ships up or sending them back during war times.

This kind of spying was mostly Moo2, but i take it Moo1 had several advantages like Moo2 at spying also.

I liked having a spying in the game. I did use it from time to time. Mainly when I was playing the Darloks or a Spy heavy custom race in MOO2.

As it was mostly a galaxy map driven space combat system with relatively short play times, I really didn't want too advanced of a spy system to slow things down.

I liked the ability of finishing a game in about 3 full days. It's the niche I found nice about MOO2.

In my present game, a friend and I are playing a LAN game on hard. We decided to limit ourselves. We both had to choose Feudal and Uncreative and couldn't choose Research or Production racial modifiers.

He has the Telepathic and Spy+20 racial traits, so he steals techs quite often.

I'm the Tolerant Subterranean race with massive population. I can have 35 pop on a Huge Terran planet. 42 with Advanced City Planning and Biospheres.

The system in Birth of the Federation is very close and playing the Cardassians or the Romulans is really fun.

Just give me that!! By far the best spy system imo.... as the Romulans combined with a minoar race which buffs your espionage/sabotage, that was what I call the great game of becoming very powerful without sending out your whole fleet for regular conflicts.